I dreamed I dug my own grave and looked
at the clouds as they lowered my coffin.
You weren’t there. I know this, because
even when I was dead I wondered.
Unlike me, time moves on quickly. It passes
through me with a hunger that gives me
second-hand embarrassment. Soon I won’t
remember how any of this started, what I
was hoping for. I drink from an old glass
of water, swallow the fly I notice too late.
I light a candle, sit in the window. I’m alive.
Everything is where it belongs. A morning
fog drifts in slowly. It snakes around the dark
homes, the naked trees, the fat raccoon
on the compost bin. They have felt it
coming. They hold still, and they wait.
Cara Nelissen is a queer writer currently based in Toronto ON. Her poetry and fiction has appeared in various literary magazines and her chapbook Pray for Us Girls was published with Rahila’s Ghost Press in 2019. She is also the reviews editor at Plenitude magazine.
